Real Money Transactions Lotro

My name is Senior Game Master (SGM) Nod, a member of the In-Game Support team. The In-Game Support team is part of Turbineâs Customer Service department, and our job is to enforce the Code of Conduct, resolve our players' in-game issues, and monitor the worlds for any new problems or concerns. My responsibility is to monitor, investigate, and take action on all reports of gold farming, spamming, selling, or buying.

With the release of the Mines of Moria, we would like to discuss this issue with our players.

Gold farming, gold selling, gold spamming, gold buying, powerleveling, account sales and purchases, or purchasing items with real-world money within the Lord of the Rings Online are called Real Money Transactions (RMT) and are strictly forbidden on all of our servers. Any time you pay real money for a service, item, or currency, you are violating the Code of Conduct and may be subject to disciplinary action. This can range from a warning to a permanent account suspension. These penalties are harsh because these actions affect significantly more than just your account. Purchasing gold or powerleveling directly contributes to the continued spamming of our game by these organizations, and to the continued farming and exploitation of our game items for their profit.

Purchasing gold or powerleveling directly encourages and supports the farming and spamming of our game.

There are other reasons not to engage in this. By purchasing your way to the end, you devalue the efforts of your fellow players and seriously damage the fun of playing the game. Additionally, you put yourself at risk of theft from risky websites and organizations; the majority of our compromised accounts are a result of visiting websites or engaging in services of this type.

10. You may not advertise the intent to, commit the act of, or facilitate the ability of others to commit the act of, unauthorized selling, buying, transferring or sharing access to any Game account.

11. You may not advertise the intent to, commit the act of, or facilitate the ability of others to commit the act of, unauthorized selling or buying of Game items for real-world monetary values or other consideration.

The following is a Question and Answer section where you can read questions and our responses about this issue. To submit a question, send an e-mail to us at rmt@turbine.com with the subject line âRMT Question.â All questions will be posted anonymously.

Question: How can I report a Gold Spammer? Theyâre so annoying!

Answer: To quickly report a gold spammer, right-click their spam in your chat window, click on Chat, then click Report as Gold Spammer. This will automatically block the spammer and report the spam to In-Game Support. If the spam is in your mailbox, click on the mail in your mailbox and choose âReport as Spamâ from the bottom options. Please note that only Gold Spam should be reported this way; In-Game Support will not respond to any other issues reported this way.

Q: How can I report a suspected gold farmer?

A: If you think someone is a gold farmer, go to the main menu, then help, then new ticket. Change the ticket type to Cheating, put in a description that says you believe this is a gold farmer, and put in the name at the bottom. A GM or SGM will then forward the name to be investigated.

Q: How can In-Game Support determine if someone is a gold farmer / buyer / powerleveler? Am I in trouble if my friends trade a lot of gold around?

A: We have several tools that look at the history of a character, account information, and our game logs to help determine which characters have violated the Code of Conduct. Unfortunately, we cannot discuss this in detail because we do not want to give away our methods. Additionally, we do not take action on legitimate transactions such as auctions, trades, or mail from regular players. Only transactions from RMT organizations will result in action. If you believe you have been incorrectly suspended, you may contact us at turbinesupportexperience@turbi ne.com and your suspension will be reviewed.

Q: Some of these websites tell me this is safe or allowed by Turbine, or that they are âofficial.â Is this true?

A: Turbine is not affiliated in any way with these websites. Any websites claiming they are endorsed or allowed by Turbine are incorrect. There is no safe way to purchase gold or powerleveling for the Lord of the Rings Online.

6 Responses to Real Money Transactions Lotro

They should allow us to buy gold. First off, a lot of us play late hours and can’t get the items all your grouping fruits get. It’s so hard to make ends meet to play the game. I love it but I can’t afford things. I know how people in guilds get free help from their higher level guild (kin) mates. I have nothing like this. There is 131 people on at the hours I play give or take, and most are lower level. The gms and turbine should be happy we chose their crap game over WoW and just let us play how we want. It’s nearly 2011 in a month and they still are concerned with us buying gold, powerleveling (everyone does this in EVERY mmo, get over it fat ass turbine people.)

Also if a stranger wants to just give me money without me paying them money (which is not trackable) I should say no, just in case they are a gold farmer? Get a clue Senior gm. If someone offered me a million dollars on the street and they looked like a crook, I’d still take it and most would. This is just a game. You are lucky to have a job to come to with WoW out there. It’s really sad that you restrict people from enjoying the game. No you promote slow progress. Slow progress takes time. Some of us have serious illnesses and don’t have time to spend doing unimportant useless content to make money “the right way.” It’s just unfair. You get your paycheck, you should just really sympathize more with the different situations that can occur in your game. I am so tempted to buy gold but I haven’t. A friend of mine got banned and actually the email was from you. he died of cancer after and LOTRO was something the helped him deal with his problems but you took it away over some crap rule because your game is broke, and that is why people need to take shortcuts, amount other reasons. You should just offer things on your store that are useful. Quest items people that people can buy since they can’t get them grouping for medical reasons.. or whatever reasons. Rep items etc. It’s sad Turbine are such cold hearted and nazi like.

I bought 50 gold from koala credits (on a Friday). It appeared in my in game mail box with no problems. I didn’t play for the weekend, and then on Monday I had an email from GM +Nod, basically a repost of the rules, and all the gold was gone! I barely played for 20 minutes with the purchased gold, yet somehow it was tracked and removed. Let that be a lesson to anyone considering buying gold.

First off, if “purchasing items with real-world money within the Lord of the Rings Online [] is strictly forbidden on all of our servers,” then why aren’t you slapping Turbine with a code of conduct problem, eh?! Don’t try to tell me people do not use RMT on Lotro EVERY DAY to buy horses, dies, recipes, etc. by plunking down real money to buy Turbine points. It’s the EXACT same thing as what you claim violates policy. I’d say the only policy violation is that Turbine loses money if the transaction is done elsewhere.

Second, if you want to encourage ‘proper’ play so much, the why the heck do you allow players to sell a ridiculously cheap to make / or grind item for tens or hundreds of gold pieces on the AH, all the while claiming the AH system is is fair to new players. Greedy-play-LOTRO-have-no-lifers sell tier one and two crafting items stacks for dozens of gold and nobody bats an eye. They get to end game with hundreds of gold in their coffers, set obscene prices at the market place and prevent new players trying to equip themselves from EVER doing ANYTHING but raid-raid-raid and grind-grind-grind just to earn a lousy 10 gold they then lose at AH buying one bracelet. Your logic is flawed beyond belief. If you are going to put a gold cap on ppl, put it on the VIPs, NOT the new players, given the freekeen amount of gold they demand we pay for a little help along the road, as they no doubt once got cheaply.

Maybe ppl would not feel the need to buy game gold for real money if the game were not deliberately stacked against newbies in the first place.

I have yet to come across gold farmers on Gladden. After having played f2p games where this was a pervasive problem, it’s an incredibly pleasant experience. As such it has contributed a lot to the integrity of the LOTR based environment.

It is also laughably hypocritical that someone who can’t even be bothered to invest the time needed for the benefits they seek, are calling Turbine “lazy”. The entire aim of a game is to have fun whilst playing, throwing your (i assume from your responses) parent’s money at it will only spoil the game for yourself. True pleasure comes from hard work and earning what you get, something which is inherent to the psychology behind every good MMOG.

Given that the GM’s are there to help make the game more fun for the population at large, they’re doing a great job. As such, kudos to those involved with the making, as well as running, of an amazing MMORPG experience.

Should read:
“…, is implying impropriety on the part of Turbine and the LOTRO community”.

Gold farming would artificially drive up the AH prices to obscene levels. At this stage, the highest level players, who invested more time into the game, can find/afford/create the rarer items. This is exactly as it should be.

From Turbine’s perspective; the game is their investment, if they aren’t generating cash in some way, there isn’t any sense in keeping the servers running. Over time RMT skews the entire game’s mechanics in such a way that it would hurt them and their investors (as we’ll just go play something else). This means less programmers for patches, new content and game improvements. The (cash shop removable) gold cap is there for exactly this reason, it’s a f2p BUSINESS MODEL. To be honest though, they’re magnanimous enough to let you remove it for free after playing long enough.
That’s why it’s so important to them that we have fun playing the game. It is actually a beautiful mutually symbiotic relationship, although I am quite sure both parties would call the other a parasite.

…

That said, if Turbine imbalances the game by themselves (through the cash shop) they really only have themselves to blame.